


Metamorphose

by tielan



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-26
Updated: 2010-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Last night, sitting on his bed with Nita's feet resting in his lap while they read through their manuals on their current errantry, Kit paused in his reading for a moment and realised he could feel her breathing in her skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metamorphose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labellementeuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labellementeuse/gifts).



> I apologise if there are any errors in this story: we couldn't find a beta in Yulechat, and the deadline for treats was approaching...

Things change. How can they not?

By the time they're back at school, they're both used to this 'dating' thing. So are their families.

Their friends are not.

"Whoa," Raoul says, his eyes shining after watching Nita drop by Kit's locker to let him know she may not be around for dinner that night. "You're my hero, bro."

Kit laughs. "For dating Neets? Come on, Raoul. It's just a different kind of friends."

His buddy glances over his shoulder to see if there's anyone listening then turns back. "With benefits?"

Now he rolls his eyes and shuts his locker door. "We're not talking about this."

"Oh, man--" But Raoul knows he's gone somewhere he shouldn't, and he drops back. "She is kinda hot you know."

In spite of himself, Kit feels his neck flush. Yeah, he knows. Last night, sitting on his bed with her feet resting in his lap while they read through their manuals on their current errantry, Kit paused in his reading for a moment and realised he could feel her breathing in her skin.

 _He_ nearly didn’t breathe for the next five minutes.

When he went to sleep, he had one of _those_ dreams.

Thank God only his pop caught him changing his sheets and helped take away the evidence with no comment. He can't imagine what his mama might have had to say about it. He doesn't want to think about what _Nita_ might think if she knew.

They haven't talked about sex yet - wizardry is more than enough intimacy for the moment.

~oOo~

Nita's sitting under Liused when he goes over. "Do things always get more complicated when you get older?"

"Maybe for your kind they do, youngling.” The rowan tree answers with a rustling whisper of leaves that somehow conveys amusement, although there's nothing there but movement of branches and the spaces of the leaves and the sky, writing the Speech for him to read, clear as a book's pages. "I suppose they do for us as well. We grow older and the world changes around us. It's a little harder to process the sunlight every year. And the ground grows harder. Older."

It's technically impossible for a tree to be watching Kit, but he can feel Liused looking at him as he crosses the yard to them and rests his hand on her trunk, looking up at the weaving foliage. "Hello, Kit."

"Hey, Liused. Hey, Neets."

She glances up at him, her manual balanced on her bare knees. "Did your mom give you much grief?"

"Nope. I got more off Raoul, actually," he admits, sitting down opposite her. “Thank the Powers that Carmela’s off at college now.” It was bad enough all summer, with Carmela either teasing him or trying to give Nita ‘tips’ on how to handle Kit. As though everything changed after the Mars incident.

Which it did. Only it didn’t, either.

“I wondered why Raoul was giving me sideways looks when I saw him in the corridor,” she says with a laugh as she riffles through the pages of her manual.

Kit feels a sudden horror. “He didn’t say anything did he?”

“No.” Brows arch, a mischievous twinkle in them. “Should I ask him what you said about me the next time I see him?”

“No!” He doesn’t quite shout it, but it’s close. And he can feel his cheeks going red. “Are we going to talk about Raoul or the Hudson River intercession?”

They talk about the intercession for nearly an hour, trading ideas and thoughts. Researching other wizardries that might be relevant, and beginning to piece together a spell that might provide their solution.

For that entire hour, they don’t touch at all, just sitting opposite each other, stretched out beneath Liused’s spreading branches in the last warmth of summer before the cool of autumn sets in.

~oOo~

Other guys begin to take an interest in Nita.

Not with the leering looks they give Janie Lowell, who’s taste in skirts still runs to the short, or the jaw-dropping ones that Carmela used to get when she dressed up and pushed the limits, but the second glances that say, clear as speech, _Hey, Callahan’s kinda hot. I wonder if..._

Kit’s more amused than jealous.

Nita’s more annoyed than amused.

“I don’t get it,” she says the evening after her Biology lab partner made a pass at her. She shared the memory with Kit before: Jimmy Robbins leaning into her personal space and asking, _What’s a babe like you doing dating a nerd like Rodriguez_? “I’m not even flirting with them!”

“Maybe you don’t have to.” Kit wonders if he can explain it in a way she’ll understand. It’s a guy thing, he suspects - or maybe he’s just writing it off as a guy thing so he doesn’t have to explain. He’s not sure he could.

The truth is that Kit likes Neets the way she is - no artifice or fakeness, no in-your-face sexiness. What Neets has is a fierce concentration she puts into everything in her life from wizardry to schoolwork, and a way of looking at a guy like he’s worth smiling at.

There are a couple of guys who’ve started thinking that maybe getting Nita Callahan to smile at them might be worth the effort.

Too bad for them she chose Kit first.

Kit eyes her. “Are you angrier at the babe reference or the nerd one?”

Nita snorts, her cheeks pink. “Both! And who uses a line like that anyway?”

It’s hard not to laugh; she sounds so embarrassed.

She bumps his shoulder. “Stop that!”

“Can’t help it,” Kit retorts, and leans his face into her hair. _But he’s right. You are a babe, you know._

Her flush heats his neck and shoulders.

~oOo~

Water is Nita’s specialty, not his. And when she’s got the lead, he lets her take it.

When she needs his power, he gives it, wholly and utterly. Three small words in the Speech that aren’t _I love you,_ but which might as well be when he says them to her. And Neets takes his power and adds it to hers, plugging it into the failing spell and shoring up the wizardry with an augment routine.

Their air is failing and the pressure’s becoming almost more than their life-support wizardry can handle when she returns his power to him, and transports them both back to the far distant beach.

It’s all Kit can do to lie in the shallow surf afterwards, his arm around Nita’s shoulders as they shiver and shake and the incoming waves mire their legs in sand.

He’s not sure if the tremors are his or hers anymore, and the specific physicality of it probably doesn’t matter. They’re both exhausted after the complex wizardry took more out of them than planned, and Kit thinks it’s going to be a while before they feel like moving.

 _I wasn’t sure we’d make it,_ Neets says, her thigh resting against his, a comfortable warm pressure in the cool of the waves.

 _You and me both._ Moving his lips would take too much time and effort right now. It’s easier to talk mind to mind. Kit’s just gonna lie here and remember how to breathe.

Okay, so he’s gonna lie here and feel Neets breathing next to him as the blue sky fades to purple above them and the tide drifts out, leaving them beached like whales.

It may be one of the hottest, most intense moments Kit’s ever had in his life.

In his head, he can feel Nita laughing, fit to match the blush that’s spreading over her cheeks.

 _You know, I feel you breathing, too,_ she says.

Later, Kit’s never sure who initiates the kiss, but he knows they both had to remember how to breathe after.


End file.
